Recently I read a newspaper article explaining how appliance manufacturers plan to drive consumers insane. Of course they don't say that. They say they want us to live in homes where all appliances are on the Internet, 'sharing information', where they are 'smarter than most of their owners'. For example, the dishwasher could be turned on from the office, the refrigerator could know when it's out of milk and the bathroom scales could transmit your weight to the gym. Listen, appliance manufacturers: we don't need a dishwasher we can communicate with from afar. If you want to improve them, give us one that senses when people leave dirty dishes in the kitchen sink and shouts, "Put those in the dishwasher right now or I'll leak all over your shoes!" We don't need a refrigerator that knows when it's out of milk. What we could use is a refrigerator that refuses to let us open its door when it senses we are about to consume our fourth chocolate eclair in two hours! As for the scales that transmit our weight to the gym: what if the gym transmitted our weight to all the other appliances on the Net? What if, heaven forbid, our fridge found out our weight? We'd never get the door open again!